Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic endocrine and metabolic disorder. To date, medications for T2DM include biguanides, sulfonylureas, α-glucosidase inhibitors and thiazolidinediones. However, there are many drawbacks in their clinical use, because that the drugs are designed for symptoms not for disease target. Consequently, more efficient and safe drugs with reasonable prices are badly needed.
Insulin resistance is the key factor of T2DM. Studies demonstrated that protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) has emerged as a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatments of type 2 diabetes mellitus. PTP1B plays an important role in the negative regulation of insulin signal transduction pathways. Accumulating evidences indicated that PTP1B inhibitors increased the level of phosphorylation of the insulin receptor and its substrate, and promote glucose transporter translocation and increased glucose uptake in insulin-sensitive cells. PTP1B inhibitor played insulin analogues and insulin-sensitizing agent. Knockout the PTP1B gene or inhibition of PTP1B protein and mRNA expression with antisense oligonucleotide (ASO), not only can significantly improve the insulin sensitivity of the test mice, but also significantly reduce the risk of obesity patients. Gold-stein et al, showed that the expression of PTP1B and LAR PTP in insulin target tissues of patients with insulin resistance are increased, and the increase block the activation of the insulin receptor tyrosine and insulin signal transduction. P387L Is a missense mutation of PTP1B, Echwald et al confirmed that the gene mutation frequency was 1.4% in patients with type 2 diabetes, while only 0.5% in the control group. It is speculated that the mutation in related with type 2 diabetes. Investigation of the role of PTP1B using an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) in ob/ob mice suggest that while PTP1expression in liver, fat and skeletal muscle down, blood glucose of ob/ob mice returned to normal, and indicators of glucose metabolism also became normal. Additionally, insulin clamp experiments showed that the liver and peripheral tissues of diabetic mice enhanced insulin sensitivity. These results confirm the negative regulatory role of PTP1B in insulin signal transduction, and its increased activity may be a causative factor for insulin resistance and insulin receptor signaling impaired. Based on these data, PTP1B has already been considered as one of the best validated biological targets for T2DM.
Reported PTP1B inhibitors include: (1) Peptide PTP1B inhibitors, which contain mimetics of pTyr, have high affinity with PTP1B. But the compounds have poor chemical and biological stability. (2) Naphthnoquinone, inhibited PTP1B activity by modification of the active sites of PTPase. (3) Thiazolidinedione, improve blood glucose control by enhancing insulin sensitivities to the target organs. Representative compounds include ciglitazone, troglitazone and rosiglitazone. However, ciglitazone has been withdrawn from market due to severe hepatotoxicity. (4) Benzo[b]naphthol[2,3-d]furans and thiophenes, these compounds are designed based on benzbromarone (PTP1B inhibitor, IC50=26 μM) and exhibited good hypoglycemic activity in mice. Unfortunately, highly negative charged, the poor cell permeability and low bioavailability of these compounds have limited their application for the development of effective drugs.